Pathology/Lab Coding Alert

996.81 won’t find a direct equivalent in ICD-10.

If your lab monitors immunosuppressant drug levels for patients undergoing a procedure, such as kidney transplant, that results in rejection you’ll have many more specific code options when ICD-10 goes active on Oct. 1, 2014. 

Currently, you would report a kidney transplant rejection as 996.81 (Complications of transplanted kidney).

But under ICD-10, you’ll have five codes to choose from when reporting complications of a kidney transplant, as follows:

• T86.10 — Unspecified complication of kidney transplant
• T86.11 — Kidney transplant rejection
• T86.12 — Kidney transplant failure
• T86.13 — Kidney transplant infection
• T86.19 — Other complication of kidney transplant.

Additional codes: Both ICD-9 and ICD-10 instruct you to report additional codes for these conditions, if applicable.

ICD-9 states, “use additional code to identify nature of complication, such as: Cytomegalovirus [CMV] infection (078.5) graft-versus-host disease (279.50-279.53) malignancy associated with organ transplant (199.2) post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder (PTLD) (238.77).

ICD-10 indicates additional codes for adverse effect to identify drug (T36-T50 with fifth or sixth character), the specified condition resulting from the complication, or devices involved and details of circumstances (Y62-Y82).